Movie: Darling wa gaikokujin

[Includes minor spoilers for the movie, but if you've read any of the comic, they won't really be spoilers anyway]

Darling wa gaikokujin (My darling is a foreigner) was originally a comic series by Saori Ogura. It was about the daily life of living with her boyfriend Tony, with lots of cute anecdotes and tales of minor cultural clashes. (It's available in English, if you are interested. I recommend it. ^_^)

I first heard of this series when they started playing snippets of it on the JR train screens to entertain commuters. I couldn't understand much of it, but it still entertained me much more than did the commercials for eikaiwa, canned coffee and sinus medicine.

The movie is pretty well based on the comics - a number of jokes, incidents and lines from the comics are in there, and sometimes they add in little scenes using art from the comics. Since the comics didn't really have a story, they had to create a storyline from the movie, moving from the start of Saori and Tony's courtship, to their relationship ups and downs, including her father's opposition to their relationship.

There are a few factual differences from the comic; for example, in the comic, Tony never meets Saori's father, her family already know she's dating a foreigner, etc.

The main difference I didn't like was that in the movie, both characters were much more passive and non-confrontational. They spent a lot of time not communicating, in order that their relationship 'problems' could grow out of proportion and threaten their future together. There were many, many scenes of sad music with one of the characters gazing pensively into the middle distance. From the comic, I got the impression that both characters would have no hesitation being assertive to deal with misunderstandings and disagreements.

How about the depiction of gaikokujin in the movie? Hmm... not much to say, since Tony is the only one with more than five minutes' screen time. There are a few gaijin; one is obnoxious and fancies himself a bit of a Charisma Man, one is nicer and helps Saori a little, and one is Tony himself, who is lovely. I guess it's nice to have a portrayal of a foreigner who is kind and speaks very good Japanese.

Actually, cultural differences are not really an important feature of this movie. There are lots of little scenes - Saori telling Tony how to eat fish with daikon-oroshi, Tony frequently struggling to remember some obscure Japanese phrase - but the real 'misunderstandings' (which are so small as to barely warrant the term) are personal rather than cultural. So late in the movie, where Saori is angsting, 'maybe we can't work out... because he's a foreigner, and we're too different...' it strikes a false note, since there was never anything to suggest that was a reason for their problems.

Is this a good movie? Hmmm... it's not bad. You might enjoy it if you are interested in the comic and want to see the big-screen portrayal of Saori and Tony. The first part, which is lighter and more humorous, was quite enjoyable. Other than that, it seems like a pretty generic and slow-paced movie.